Family Days Out in North Devon: A Gnome Reserve Not To Miss

What would you do with 4 acres in North Devon? Artist Anne Atkins created a gnome reserve with more than 2000 garden gnomes – a veritable gnome village if you will. And, an adjoining wildflower trail (free space for the gnomes to frolic?). One of the quirkiest places to visit in North Devon, this gnome world makes a great family day out. Sort of like the Elf Garden in Iceland, my kids thoroughly enjoyed their time. We met a few families who were return visitors so clearly this gnome world in Devon is a popular attraction.

Family Days Out in North Devon: A Gnome Reserve Not To Miss

The Gnome reserve and wildflower trail is a quirky quintessentially English experience. For a child, it’s a world of romping in forests and magical mystery adventures that Enid Blyton would recognise. For an adult, the gnome world is English eccentricity in all of its random yet harmless outrageousness.

Gnome Ann

Founded in 1979 by trained artist Ann Atkins, the Gnome Reserve and wildflower garden is a charming place tucked away in a corner of North Devon. Ann mans the visitor centre and her family operate the gnome village and wildflower centre. She seems to be about 80 years old so she clearly is enjoying her work if she’s still doing it almost 4 decades later.

Not only does Ann create the gnomes, Ann paints magical scenes of fairies and pixies that are sold in the gift shop. Of course, my daughter got a painting for her room and my son got a gnome with an Arsenal shirt for his favourite football team.

The English gnome football team (and they actually win trophies!)

Gnome Village

This visitor attraction will be part of the 25,000 people who visit annually. Like my kids, these are also the same sort of people who have seen Gnomeo and Juliet several times.

Visitor’s Centre

The Gnome reserve has a small visitor centre which has a gift store where you can watch Anne Atkins work on her projects in between tending to her visitors.

You can also see displays of some antique gnomes and grab some snacks to tide you over after walking four whole acres. British snacks of course involve cream tea, sandwiches and Ribena.

The royal family gnomes. Is it wrong that they actually look better than the real ones??

Did you know that the world’s most expensive garden gnome is insured for 1 million pounds and is stored in a bank vault? Try and snicker at that if you will.

Gnome World

Be prepared to don a gnome hat to visit the gnomes. It’s only polite to fit in with the locals.

Sheltered among the trees, the 2000+ gnomes are busy going about their business whether it’s fishing or practicing for the London Olympics. Amidst the gnomes, you get other cute creatures such as bunnies.

The gnomes have a case of invading bunnies

Fishing for stones makes for a nice interactive activity. Of course, my kids made it a competition to see who could get the most stones.

A Gnome World Gallery

Who knew gnomes could do everything that a person can do? My daughter decided her favourite gnome was the one practicing yoga and my son’s favourite was the one doing karate.

A game of gnome chess

A friendly game of gnome football

Nothing gnomes like better than fishing

A very British gnome wedding

Just hanging with the gnomies

Wildflower Trail

I have to be honest I expected more flowers in the wildflower trail sort of like a wildflower meadow. It could have been the season, but the wildflowers we saw were more plants that were clearly labelled.

The wildflower field is full of butterflies.

In fact, there were more than 200+ types of British wildflowers which are all labelled. I have heard of many of the plants but had never seen them in real life. Or, if I did I didn’t know what they were!

For example, you hear about spearmint all the time as a chewing gum flavour but it was interesting to see (and to smell) the real plant.